Malays. Appl. Biol. (2018) 47(1): 65–71
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A FABRICATED BIO-FILTRATION
SYSTEM IN TREATING THE DOMESTIC GREYWATER
WINNIE ANAK RENANG1, NUR AMALINA SHAIRAH ABDUL SAMAT1*, RUBIYAH BAINI,
MD REZAUR RAHMAN1 and ONNI SUHAIZA SELAMAN1
1Department of Chemical Engineering and Energy Sustainability, Faculty of Engineering,
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Sarawak, Malaysia
*E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Accepted 14 February 2018, Published online 31 March 2018
ABSTRACT
In many developing countries, domestic greywater remains as a large contributor of organic pollution in rivers. Considering rivers as the main source of freshwater, the level of pollution need to be minimized by pre-treating the domestic greywater from residential areas prior to release into the drains and rivers. With the need of this pre-treatment process and the economic burden to install current technologies, it is hence necessary to develop a more low-cost wastewater treatment system. Utilizing agriculture wastes as the bio-filter media in the greywater treatment system is one of the possible options to reduce the cost of treatment and accumulation of agricultural wastes. Therefore, this study focuses on the performance of agricultural wastes; coconut coir and rice husk, as low-cost packing media and biofilm material carrier for domestic greywater treatment. The performance of these media were evaluated based on the removal efficiencies of BOD5 and COD from the wastewater samples. The results have shown that there were insignificant differences in the performance of both media in removing BOD5 and COD, such that the removal efficiencies achieved by coconut coir media were 43.93% and 38.19% respectively, whilst the later recorded removal efficiencies of 42.42% and 34.85% respectively.
Key words: Greywater treatment, coconut coir, rice husk, packing media
